On Wed, 13 Aug 1997, Aaron Williams wrote:

>  I received a system back from one of our labs today that is running
> NetBSD 1.0.  Everyone that was once involved with this system has
> had a major case of brain fade and can't remember any passwords.
> 
> How can I remove the root password without knowing the password?

   The recommended way is going to be boot in single user mode and 
   edit the password file.  Since you have physical access to the 
   system, you could alternately remove the drive and place it in
   another NetBSD system as a "data" drive ... alter the files and
   replace the drive back in the original box.

   A more interesting approach is to exploit some weakness in the
   OS that hasn't been fixed (most sysadmins should have knowledge
   of holes that exist in their OSs at older versions -- as they
   should have fixed them on their own boxes  :^) and "hack" root.

   It's not much of a hack as the holes should be well-documented,
   but it's still using knowledge that isn't common to everyone.

   andrew.  (brennan@auhs.edu)